“Confound you, Frank Morrison!” cried Dick, in a rage, as he jumped up and faced his brother-in-law. “I won’t stand it. My two sisters are as pure as angels. Do you dare to tell me to my face that you believe Renée guilty?”
There was a dead silence in the room, and at last Frank Morrison spoke.
“Dick,” he said, and his voice shook, “you are a good fellow. You are right: I am a fool and a scoundrel.”
“Yes,” cried Dick; “but do you dare to tell me you believe that of Renée?”
“I’d give half my life to know that she was innocent,” groaned Morrison.
“You are a fool, then,” cried Dick, “or you’d know it. There, I didn’t come to quarrel, but to try and make you both happy; and now matters are ten times worse. But I won’t believe this about John.”
“It’s true enough,” said Morrison sadly. “Poor little lass! I liked Gertrude. You should not have let that scoundrel have her.”
“We have a weakness for letting our family marry scoundrels.”
“Yes,” said Morrison, speaking without the slightest resentment; “she had better have had poor Lord Henry Moorpark.”
“Oh!” said Dick. “There, I’m going. ’Day.”